You lean into the throttle coaxing the Maserati-designed, Ferrari-built, 4.2-liter V-8 into delivering as much power and speed as your lawyer and bank account can handle. And you wonder: If this is a car, what are all those frumpy lumps of metal getting in your way? Or, if those are cars, what on earth is the GT? Because it's sure not like those.

Should you be so bold or reckless, or have access to a racetrack, you can hit 173 mph flat out, Maserati says. You'll notch off the first 60 mph of that run in about five seconds, quick enough to keep you pinned firmly to the seat.

Fine. It'll go. But there's a lot more go for less dough available: Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 ($107,000), Dodge Viper SRT-10 ($90,000) and Nissan GT-R ($78,000) all scream to 60 mph in four seconds or less and are 190-200 mph cars.

So if you're a performance purist, skip the Maser. But rapidity isn't really what the GT is about. It has enough zoom for bona fides, but mainly you buy a Maserati GT for the looks. Including the ones you get while driving it. Not everybody will have seen the Maserati GT, so you'll get a lot of what-the-holy-Ned-is-that stares. Italian automaker Maserati sells only about 2,500 cars a year in the U.S., about 60% of them the GT.

The price explains a lot. For that much money, you certainly should get exclusivity and envious stares.

Every nationality, it seems, has an automotive signature. Detroit, muscle; Japan, zippy and reliable; Germany, solid and stolid. And Italian, breathtaking — visually and otherwise. The Maserati clearly lives up to its Italian imperative.

But if the test car — a base-level 2008 model (the '09 is mainly unchanged, Maserati says) — was representative, you wouldn't buy a GT for top refinement and top quality any more than you would for absolute top speed.

Maserati says the test car was a well-traveled demo model, used for sales promotions and at customer events as well as for testing by auto writers. Shopworn, you might say.

These flaws were front and center in the test car:

•Driver's seat creaked and groaned.

Maser says the seat's memory buttons were damaged at a customer event, and the seat has been removed and replaced several times.

•Wind howled like a banshee around the outside mirrors. Simply moving your head near the mirror redirected the air and quelled the yowl, suggesting a simple mirror redo could fix the problem.

Yep, Maser says, and it's being fixed.

•Body creaked over sharp bumps — a creak different than the seat creak.

No previous complaints about that one, Maserati says.

•Adjuster for the outside mirrors worked only intermittently.

Tricky little bugger; hard to position just-so, Maserati says.

•Turn signals didn't always cancel. A nearly moot point because the signal stalk was almost impossible to reach, tucked behind the big paddle shifter for the automatic transmission's manual mode.

Now, surely if you'd just dropped 121 large, you'd be in the dealer's face fast, loud and often until your voluptuous GT was put right.

But, then again, for 121 grand, you should be able to sign the papers and then kiss the dealer goodbye until oil-change time.

The GT gets high marks for drivability — and that's news. Italian go-fast buggies aren't universally tame in traffic, but the Maserati GT played well with others. It burbled in easygoing fashion when the vehicular crowd pressed in. It picked up speed evenly, gently — if that was your wish — when the crowd thinned — or leapt with fury when you floored the throttle. That's a maneuver you're likely to make more often than not because of the engine's sweet song when you do.

The only challenge was the steering, the effect of which is not to be underestimated. Too quick. A little movement of the steering wheel threatened a bigger-than-desired change in direction.

The front seats were comfortable, though a bit confining because of side bolsters that are meant to keep you from sliding about while dancing with the Maser.

Big bolsters on the rear seats mean you get only two slots and neither fits a kid seat, but wouldn't that tarnish the image: GT with child seat? Lots of demerits as you rumbled through the Starbucks lot, in the modern equivalent of American Graffiti cruising.

As a package, the Maserati GT was disappointing because of the (perhaps non-representative) flaws in a car so expensive, but also was heart-stoppingly beautiful and, in the end, very honest. It was just as much fun to drive as it looked like it would be.

ABOUT THE GRAN TURISMO

•What? High-performance, high-style, high-dollar, rear-drive coupe.

•When? The 2009 version, which is nearly identical to the '08 tested, went on sale recently.

•Where? Manufactured at Modena, Italy.

•How much? The 2009 GT starts at $121,100 (up from $113,450 for the '08), including $1,500 shipping and $2,100 federal gas-guzzler tax.

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